Common Canberra birds No.1

["Geoffrey Dabb" <>]

Galahs seem to be the bird of the moment.  For the last GBS year they topped the abundance table.  Last week there were thousands around the streets of South Canberra, but this week there are not so many on my beat.  [This is possibly because the rain softened the ground last week.  They were feeding on grass rootlets.]  All this since the 1950s when the Galah was an infrequent wanderer to the ACT.  Ageing and sexing these birds does not seem to quite so simple as has been suggested.  I have gleaned the following from the references to hand (‘Forshaw’ being ‘Australian Parrots’ 2^nd rev ed).

 

Forshaw

	Adult male	Adult female	Immature
‘Periopthalmic ring’	Dull crimson	Similar	Pale grey, slightly tinted pink
Iris	Dark brown	Pinkish red	Brown

Cooper illustration

	Adult male (from ‘Gungahlin’)	Adult female	Immature
P ring	Pale blue	Pink
Iris	Dull yellow	Dark brown

HANZAB

	Adult male	Adult female	Immature
P ring	Pink-dark pink-pinkish red	Similar, carunculations smaller	(possibly) pale yellowish-pink
Iris	Black-brown	Pink-orange pink-red	Not fully pink until 2/3

HANZAB illustration

	Adult male	Adult female	Immature
P ring	Pink	Pink	Pale pink
Iris	Dark	Yellowish-pink?	Dark

 

Yesterday and this morning I snapped about 50 individual birds in Narrabundah and Griffith.  By later editing the snaps I could bring up the colour of all but the darkest eyes.  Such editing was at the expense of the aesthetic qualities, but I tried not to distort the colour.  Nearly all irises were a pale muddy brown.  I could find none that I would call ‘pink’.  There were a small number of obvious juveniles, still with grey patches.  Here’s an example, note eye colour:

 

 

There were a couple of very dark eyes that I took to belong to old males eg  (lightening revealing just a trace of light pigment in the iris)

 

 

I take this to be either a female or, more likely, a sub-2 yr bird:

 

 

The colour of the ‘periopthalmic ring’ is something of a problem because the appearance seems to depend on how knobbly it is.  Against the blue-grey background there are little peaks of pinkish pigmentation and the size and structure might depend on age as much as sex.  This is probably a male from the ‘carunculations’, and it looks old:

 

 

 

My conclusion  -  little more than a guess based on large opthalmic rings and dark eyes being the exception – is that there a lot of immatures (less than 3 years) in these flocks, perhaps 70-80%.